Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

The baked beans are leaking down the wall and on to the skirting board.

“This has something to do with that man, doesn’t it?”

Taj doesn’t answer. Aisha looks at the floor.

“What about Syd and Rafiq?”

“They are coming too. We’ll be together. In a few months I’ll send word to you. Money. Passports. You can join us.”

“In Pakistan?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to live in Pakistan. I want to live here.”

Taj pushes back his chair and goes to the bedroom where he takes an old suitcase from the top of a wardrobe and begins packing.

“What is it, Taj? We have to talk about this.”

“You’ll do as I say because I’m your husband.”

“Why can’t you get a job here?”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’m sick of this country, sick of begging, sick of being made to feel like a scrounger or a criminal.”

“Most people don’t treat us like that.”

“We’re discriminated against.”

“We’re just poor.”

“What about my father, eh? He died because they discriminated against him.”

“He died of heart disease.”

“He was more than a year on that waiting list. He could have had a new heart, but they gave it to some white woman.”

“She had three young children.”

“She wasn’t on the list as long as he was.”

Taj is throwing socks and underwear into the bag, T-shirts, an extra pair of jeans. Aisha is standing in the doorway, her apron bunched in her fists. She can see his muscles flexing on either side of his spine.

“You don’t have to go. You can pull out. Tell Syd and Rafiq.”

“I’m committed.”

“What about me… the baby?”

“You’re going to wait for me.”

Taj reaches into his pocket and produces a roll of cash in a rubber band. Aisha blinks twice, moves her mouth. She has never seen so much money. It scares her.

“What have you done?” she whispers, trembling now.

A silence. Taj isn’t going to tell her. It’s not what he’s done but what’s expected of him…

Summer leaving. Autumn coming. On an ordinary morning full of ordinary things, Ruiz walks to clear his head, following the river, watching the sun ascend. He passes old Billingsgate Market and HMS Belfast reaching the shadows of Tower Bridge.

Six years ago, not far from here, he was pulled from the Thames with a bullet in his thigh and a missing ring finger. They found him clinging to a navigation buoy east of Tower Bridge. Less than a mile away, drifting on the tide, a boat looked like a floating abattoir. At first Ruiz had no memory of what had happened, but then it came back slowly in snapshots, dreams and shivers. He had been washed through London’s famous sewers and been spat out into the Thames as he followed the ransom for a missing girl. He survived the river and the bullets, but his career couldn’t be saved.

Richard North had been fished from a different river-a bullet hole in his head. He won’t be coming home to meet his new daughter or watch his son grow up. Ruiz had almost surrendered that same chance with his own children.

At that moment a bird, black as polished onyx, tumbles from the sky and lands with a dull thud on the footpath. Neck broken and blood on its beak. Ruiz looks up and contemplates which window it dashed itself upon. In a split second shining air had turned to solid glass and the world had snapped shut. Not fair or unfair. Life.

He turns and begins retracing his steps. Joe O’Loughlin appears ahead of him.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

“Why?”

“The river.”

He has a large white envelope. “Luca wanted me to give you this. He said you’d know what to do with it.”

“Where’s Holly?”

“She’s gone shopping. That girl can make twenty quid go a long way.”

“Has she ever shown you the receipts?”

Joe’s face drops. “Am I aiding and abetting a shoplifter?”

“Holly is a little more subtle than that.”

The two men walk in silence, feeling a chill breeze blowing down the river, moving into the heart of the city.

“You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

Ruiz takes his tin of boiled sweets from his pocket. Offers one. Makes his own selection.

“I still don’t know who killed Zac Osborne and Colin Hackett. One died for the notebook, the other for the photographs. Same shooter. Same MO.”

“You have a theory.”

“Not really, but I keep coming back to the Americans. They’ve known about the notebook all along.”

“Maybe they’re investigating the money-laundering.”

“Maybe they killed Zac Osborne and Colin Hackett and Richard North.”

“You’re talking about state-sponsored murder.”

“You’re right. Stupid idea. I’m sure they’re all registered patriots.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

Joe falls silent. Ruiz fills the void. “Richard North told his secretary he’d done something terrible. He was investigating some of the transactions.”

“Cold feet?”

“Maybe he developed a conscience.” Ruiz pats his pockets. “You got any spare change? I got to make a call.”

He taps the coins against the metal box, waiting for Capable Jones to answer.

“Been trying to reach you?”

“Problem?”

“That thing you wanted. Brendan Sobel has booked a restaurant for this evening at nine o’clock-a private dining room at Trellini’s in Little Thames Street. You want me to make a booking?”

“A table for two.”

Owen Price, the editor of the Financial Herald, is an Australian who arrived in London in the eighties at the height of the Wapping dispute and hasn’t smiled since Margaret Thatcher resigned in tears. The editorial meeting has been underway for twenty minutes. Luca and Gooding are pitching the story-the money trail from Baghdad to Mersey Fidelity, the ghost accounts, secret deals and tax evasion.

Price grunts occasionally, a bestial gesture that can be read as either positive or negative, depending upon a person’s level of paranoia. “And you’re saying this dead banker is involved?”

“Up to his eyeballs,” says Gooding.

“It was his job to vet all new accounts and investigate any suspicious transactions,” adds Luca.

“Now he’s dead, which means he can’t verify your story,” says Price.

Gooding: “We don’t need him to verify the story and dead men can’t be libeled.”

“How high does it go?” asks Price.

“Richard North is the brother-in-law of Mitchell Bach, the chief financial officer.”

Price wrinkles his nose, not liking some hidden smell. “Call Legal and tell them to have a QC ready. I want the lawyers involved early. Keep this to a small team. Need-to-know only. You can have Spencer and Blaine.”

The editor is pacing back and forth to the window, chewing on a biro. “They’re going to shit bricks upstairs. Mersey Fidelity has a big advertising budget. Deep pockets.”

“Is that a problem?” asks Luca.

“Not for you, Sunshine, unless this is a set-up.” Price looks at the cracked plastic end of the biro and tosses it into the bin. “This is one of those stories you fuck up only once. Could cost us millions in a libel action. My job. Your job. Oh, right, you don’t have one of those.”

He picks up another pen and addresses Gooding. “You’re in charge. Personalize the story. I want a full profile on Richard North-animal, vegetable and mineral-and get me the complete Bach family album. Where’s the wife?”

“She had a baby last night,” says Luca.

“Better and better. I want someone at the hospital. Send her flowers. A letter. Softly, softly… she could tell her side of the story…”